No home games (again), plenty of talent: An early look at Legion football in Year 2

Ask Legion Collegiate Academy athletic director and head football coach Strait Herron what’s happened in the months since the end of his program’s inaugural season, and he’ll dictate you a long list.

He’ll mention how the Legion football team was placed in a region (Region 2-2A), and he’ll explain how that helps ease the burden of filling 10 open weeks of a schedule — something the team had to do in 2019.

He’ll talk about how much construction has been done in preparation for opening Legion’s permanent campus. The school resided on a temporary campus in 2019, and its permanent site — which will include a building that has 16 classrooms; an athletic building with a gym, a weight room and several coaching offices; a building for a student union; and an athletic field — is set to be open for students sometime this semester.

He’ll probably also recount the lawsuit over the summer that his school was involved in. Legion, Rock Hill’s newest public charter school, was one of 12 schools to join a lawsuit against the South Carolina High School League that argued that amendments passed by the SCHSL in March directly and unfairly targeted public charter and private schools. Under one of said amendments, most students who transfer from a traditional school to a public charter or private school would’ve had to sit out a year before they’d be eligible to play a sport. (Legion and the other plaintiff schools were granted a temporary injunction that would prevent those recent amendments from going into effect for the 2020-21 school year — but the ordeal still had an effect on the Legion program, Herron said.)

And then, after all of that, Herron will be ready to talk football.

But even that will have a 2020 twist.

“What’s hard about Year 2 right now is getting through COVID,” Herron told The Herald after a practice last week. “Every day is a change. There’s always a change, just trying to get through those little changes day to day is difficult.”

So, yes: A lot has happened between the Legion football program’s first season and its second.

What does that mean for the 2020 Lancers?

Herron: ‘I’m satisfied where we are right now’

For all that has happened with Legion, much will still be the same on the football field.

Like last year, the Lancers are practicing in Hargett Park and Cherry Park in Rock Hill for the time being. Also like last year, they won’t play a football game in front of a home crowd.

They’re still led by a staff with unending merits: There are the several-time state champions from Rock Hill in Herron (head coach/defensive line coach), Bobby Carroll (defensive coordinator) and Jimmy Wallace (offensive line coach); there’s Spencer Carroll (offensive coordinator), Bobby’s son who’s worked with his dad the past few years; there’s Eric Moulds (wide receivers coach), a former NFL wideout; and there are others.

And the team returns, and adds, a lot of key players.

Junior Joey Hylinski will lead the Lancers at quarterback. Hylinski, originally from Clover, passed the eye test in the team’s scrimmage against Berea at Gaffney this past weekend, proving that he can throw the ball all over the field.

“He’s gotten better,” Herron said. “I’m glad to see what he’s been doing. You can just tell he’s experienced. You can’t do anything to help a football player more than to just give him experience.”

At the scrimmage, Hylinski found Liam Graham several times, including for a third quarter touchdown. His other favorite targets included Donaven Pittman, Ian Kramer, Isaac Kramer and Vic Lindsay.

Hylinski was protected by a solid offensive line, which featured returners Parker Prevette and Marshall Stafford, and he handed the ball off to his playmaking starting running back, junior Zion Rasheed, who transferred from Olympic High School in Charlotte this summer.

Playmakers on defense include outside linebacker Nathan Kelly, inside linebacker Tommy Neff (who transferred from Rock Hill High), defensive linemen Ibn White, defensive back Sky Woodard (who forced an interception in the team’s scrimmage Saturday) and others.

Colin Muschik returns as the kicker for Legion.

“I’m satisfied where we are right now, considering what we’ve been through this summer,” Herron said after his team’s scrimmage Saturday. “(We’ve done) a lot of preparation in a very short period of time.”

2020 Legion football schedule

Here’s the Lancers’ football schedule for this upcoming season. All kickoffs begin at 7:30 p.m.

Sept. 25: Chesnee (away)

Oct. 2: OPEN

Oct. 9: St. Joseph’s (away)

Oct. 16: Landrum (away)

Oct. 23: Blacksburg (away)

Oct. 30: Buford (away)

Nov. 6: Gray Collegiate (away)

Editor’s note: This story is one of 15 high school football previews The Herald will run prior to the first game of the regular season on Sept. 25. Look out for the next one to appear at heraldonline.com later this week.

This story was originally published September 22, 2020 at 9:00 AM.

Alex Zietlow

The Herald

Alex Zietlow writes about sports and the ways in which they intersect with life in York, Chester and Lancaster counties for The Herald, where he has been an editor and reporter since August 2019. Zietlow has won nine S.C. Press Association awards in his career, including First Place finishes in Feature Writing, Sports Enterprise Writing and Education Beat Reporting. He also received two Top-10 awards in the 2021 APSE writing contest and was nominated for the 2022 U.S. Basketball Writers Association’s Rising Star award for his coverage of the Winthrop men’s basketball team.